Defiance

by Sadie Moss

  If I didn’t feel so lost and terrified, I’d feel small and ignorant.

  I wish I had never sacrificed myself to Zelus and started this insanity. If I’d lived, perhaps Mother and I could have healed Nolan with time and effort. Maybe I could have convinced the village it was time to move on, to leave the small patch of land our people claimed years ago. We could have traveled to another god’s lands, one who cares about the humans who worship them. I could have found a dozen other ways to help my people, but the way I chose only brought me heartache.

  At least I’ll die knowing Nolan will live on. That he and my mother are safe for the time being.

  A warm gust of air caresses my ear, and my gaze darts around the corridor, looking for the open window. But even as I search for where the breeze has come from, I realize it reminds me of Paris holding me in the woods last night. His breath tickled my hair just so as he murmured in my ear.

  The breeze brushes my skin again, and then a whisper follows it. “Get ready.”

  Paris?

  I blink. Surely I’ve imagined that. My broken and betrayed heart is playing tricks on me. But then I notice how the hallways we’re traversing have thinned of people, and we appear to be in an interior corridor with no windows to give our location away, only flickering torches of magic on the walls. Could they be…

  Before that thought can fully form, all three men release me and spring into action.

  Without their hands gripping me tightly, I sway before taking a few quick steps to right myself. As I do, Echo slams his fist into the face of the guard directly behind him, and Callum sweeps one long leg out, taking down two guards at once, their heads hitting the floor with sickening thunks. Paris plucks at the air over my shoulder, and I feel the tingle of weave magic as he turns on the guards too.

  I’m frozen, so stunned by the sudden turn of events that I don’t even see the heavily armored man heading straight for me until it’s too late. Before I can react, Callum steps in front of me and absorbs the man’s blow with his back. He tucks me against his chest and we whirl away from the sudden influx of guards, leaving Paris and Echo in the middle of it.

  The two of them are pulling at the weave hard and fast, tossing ropes of magic around the guards to subdue them. In a matter of minutes, the floor is covered in trussed up guards, their arms and legs bound by magic and their lips sealed by the same.

  Callum’s hand wraps around mine, warm and calloused, and he puts a finger to his lips, urging me to silence. Then he yanks me into a sprint with Echo and Paris close at our heels.

  I leap over a downed messenger, mesmerized by what my men have done. They’ve quickly and thoroughly dismantled an entire armed guard without killing a single one of them. Nothing I’ve ever witnessed has appeared so calculated, coordinated, and precise.

  These men are better warriors than I’ve ever given them credit for.

  We race down the interior hall, and the three messengers lead me down a perpendicular path. A guard pops out of another hallway, and Echo disarms him and knocks him out with vicious quickness, never missing a step as we continue to run. The next hallway opens up, lit by windows from the outside. There are more guards here, and Callum strikes down one like a viper. The second is much farther away—but he must hear the blow of his partner’s body hitting the floor, because he turns around.

  “Hey! You there! What are you doing?”

  His loud bellow echoes off the cavernous halls, and I cringe. There’s no way he wasn’t heard by every guard in this wing of the palace. So much for running in silence.

  Paris tightens a band of the weave around the poor man, cutting off his next words with a strangled yelp. Then he knocks the guard’s head with the hard plane of his elbow, and the messenger topples over, unconscious before he hits the floor.

  We reach the grand staircase near the entryway, and beyond it, I can see the front doors.

  But those doors aren’t even an option anymore.

  This area is a convergence of hallways that lead into various portions of the castle, and it appears that every guard available is running right toward us from all directions.

  Except for the stairs.

  Callum drags me up the steps at a dead sprint, my feet barely touching the floor as he flies up them two and three steps at a time. I cling to his thick arm as if it’s my life raft in a dangerous sea, letting him manhandle me up the stairs because it’s my only chance of keeping up.

  At the next level, we’re met with a new resistance.

  Dozens of guards sprint toward us down the intersecting hallway on the second floor, and I notice now the way the men chasing us up the stairs are yelling. They’ve been calling for backup. We were announced before we ever arrived.

  “Farse it all.” Echo’s voice is a low, breathless grunt.

  We keep climbing, and on the third floor, we finally find an empty hallway. Callum picks a direction—it could be random, for all I know; I can barely see straight—and we sprint away from the stairwell. The mass of men coming up behind us thunder up the stairs with a dull roar, I glance back to see them spilling onto the third level landing, swords aloft.

  Callum stops short, his boots skidding over the polished floor. I catch sight of five guards appearing from the hallway ahead of us, blocking our path.

  Nish! How many men does Kaius need working for him inside the palace?

  Even worse, these men come equipped with magic.

  I duck a blast of white hot energy and whip around to watch it barrel into the crowd of oncoming guards. Another blast makes Callum curse, and he leaps aside, pushing me ahead of him. Then magic is pulsing through the air all around us.

  This is it, I think desperately, the realization rattling around in my shocked brain. We’ve run as far and as fast as we can. The game is up.

  But my messengers clearly don’t agree. No sooner do I have the thought then Callum shoves through a small, nearly hidden door in the wall.

  “Go, go, go!”

  He practically shoves me through, slipping past me to pull me up the steps, and the four of us ascend a narrow spiral stone staircase.

  I keep my eyes forward, but I can hear Echo and Paris clashing swords with the guards behind us. Magic still zings in the air too, and I want to help them, to do something other than just let Callum drag me on this wild goose chase. But I remember how sternly the warrior once told me to keep my powers secret from Kaius.

  So I just try to keep my feet under me, and I run.

  The stairway spills into the open air high above Ironholde. We’re at the top of the castle, on a narrow wall-walk at one end of the massive structure. I gasp, grabbing Callum’s shirtsleeve as I inadvertently peer over the edge. Dizziness makes me take a step back, and nausea rolls inside me. As it turns out, I do not like heights.

  Paris and Echo slam the door shut on the stairwell and lean against it. The blond messenger’s fingers pluck adeptly at the weave, creating some kind of barrier over the heavy wood.

  We’re safe from the guards… for the moment.

  But we’re also out of room to run.

  Far below in the courtyard, I hear trumpets blaring. Callum turns to us, his face hard. “The whole palace knows now.”

  8

  The trumpets are harmonious and lyrical, but even so, the song they play is obviously a battle march or a call to arms. The short tune blares three times, and then the horns fade away.

  In the seconds after the trumpets finish, the ground begins to shake beneath my feet.

  My knees bend, my body instinctively trying to maintain its balance as my heart lodges in my throat. But I realize immediately that it isn’t the ground shaking, but the palace. Stray pebbles rattle over the stone as the whole castle shivers, the vibration growing in intensity until I could swear the stone itself is roaring.

  But it isn’t the stone roaring—half a second later, a man’s angry scream reaches my ears. Kaius’s rage is a living thing, the sound pulsing into me with no less violence and ferocity than
a blow to my head. I fall to my knees, precariously close to the small ledge that separates the tower from the open air beyond, and squeeze my eyes closed, clinging to the stone beneath me as it continues to shake.

  I know that awful sound is the god because it feels like him, like his ancient, powerful presence. It’s as if he’s inside my head with that scream, and the pain doesn’t stop until the sound does.

  “And now Kaius knows.” Echo hauls me back to my feet, shaking his head with a grimace. His voice sounds distant and muffled, and I wonder what Kaius’s scream did to me to make me so fuzzy. Echo’s hands shove my hair away from my face as he asks, “Sage, are you all right?”

  I don’t have a chance to reply. The door barring the guards from our small tower threshold explodes outward, broken under a guard’s magic. Wood and weave magic blow past us with a violent burst of air. Echo throws himself between me and the blast, absorbing the force of the blow with his body.

  And then the guards are upon us.

  Panic seizes me. We have nowhere left to run, and if that wave of guards spills onto the landing with us, they’ll push us right off the edge.

  Paris and Echo raise their swords, ready to fight, but Callum yells, “Jump!”

  His big arms wrap around my waist, and he throws us both off the edge of the tower.

  The fall takes my breath away, stealing all the air from my lungs so that I can’t even scream. We plummet through empty space, hurtling toward the courtyard below. I fell out of a tree once when I was little, but I’ve never fallen like this before from so high a perch.

  I can’t breathe.

  I can’t see through the wind cutting against my face and eyes.

  I’m utterly sure I’ve left my insides up above and my body is nothing but an empty shell hurtling toward death.

  If my body hits the ground below, will I die a second death? Or will Kaius resurrect my soul only to torture me and extinguish me for good?

  The ground is coming closer, growing larger as we fall, and I can’t help but think of Callum’s magic mirror and the way it zoomed in on my village, making the small huts grow bigger in my vision.

  That mirror led us here. I led us here to die.

  But as we near the final descent, Callum shouts, “Now!”

  All three men gesture in unison. There’s a flash of magic, and a split opens up the earth. The two sides pull apart, both edges waving and sparking like firelight with a deep, dark pit in the middle. We tumble past the ground and right into the darkness.

  Once inside, our momentum slows. We’re still falling, but not at the high rate of speed we were before. Disoriented, I look around and attempt to make sense of what’s happened. I realize with a start that I can control my body. Even though there’s nothing to brace against, nothing to ground me, I can rotate and look behind me at Echo and Paris.

  There’s little to see but darkness and colorful lights that seem to blur and dance all around us like magic.

  Behind Echo and Paris, the portal the men created is closing, the sliver of light growing smaller as the two edges form back together. But in that leftover light, I catch sight of guards.

  Some of the men followed us through.

  They’ve entered the portal with us.

  I point, hoping the widening of my eyes can indicate my urgency, because I still can’t find my voice after that fall. Paris and Echo both whirl around, lifting their swords against the enemy.

  The atmosphere is thicker here somehow, and they move slowly, but their blows are no less deadly because of it. Their blades slash in strangely exaggerated arcs, making their sword fight almost beautiful. It’s almost as if they’re merfolk moving gracefully underwater, legs churning the air and hair waving like seaweed.

  As if this is a dance rather than a fight to the death.

  But it is deadly. Paris and Echo don’t hold back this time. Maybe it’s because we’re outside of Kaius’s reach now, but they don’t just subdue the guards. Within moments, they’ve decapitated both men. Bodies and heads separate slowly, and even the blood flowing from their necks moves languidly through the air.

  Those two weren’t the only ones who slipped through the portal though. There are more. They’ve crept up on us faster, tumbling into our small group with their weapons at the ready. Four pursuers remain, each with a strange mix of fury and fear on their faces.

  And one of them is angling right at me.

  There’s no time to reach for the dagger I wear at my waist, and no time to yell for Callum. I reach for the weave, terrified it won’t be there in this strange in-between place. But it is—my fingers latch on to those sweet strands, and I yank, wrapping the magic around the man’s sword. With a slow pull and all of my concentration, my magic tugs his sword right from his grasp and sends it falling through the ether.

  Callum’s arm has fallen away from me to fight his own battle, so I’m well and truly on my own in this strange place.

  The guard’s body crashes into mine, and I pivot with the force. He wraps a hand around my neck, squeezing hard until I can’t breathe. I pluck at the weave, reaching for new strings as I struggle to suck in air. I manage to create a rope of magic wrap it around his neck as black spots begin to burst in my vision. I intend to strangle him, just as he’s doing to me, and hope I don’t die before he does.

  I’m furious at the thought that I might have survived that manic chase and a fall from the highest palace tower only to die here—and that anger must be a catalyst to my power. When I tug the strands of the weave wrapped around his neck, they slice right through his skin and muscle, tearing his head from his body.

  Suddenly, there’s a tremendous pressure from behind me and a loud ripping sound. I rotate in time to see a new split opening before us. Callum is close by, no longer holding me but shoving another dead guard away from his sword. Then we’re all falling through the new opening.

  We hit the ground this time, though thankfully much less hard than it would have been had we hit the palace courtyard.

  I land on my side, all the breath expelling from me with the force of my body striking the earth, while my legs splay over Callum, who hit the ground first. Paris and Echo fall nearby in a tangle of limbs and curse words, and a split second later, the dismembered head of the guard I killed hits the ground beside me.

  Up above, the portal seals shut before any other bodies fall out.

  I’m staring in disgust at the head when Paris lifts himself onto his elbows and grins at me. He points at the dead guard. “What you did there? Fantastic. I’d like to see you do it again.”

  “Oh, shut up, you masochist,” Echo grouses, shoving his brother off his legs as he sits up. “The woman just decapitated a man with her fingers. Give her a break.”

  My throat aches from the beating it took before I defeated the guard. I roll to my hands and knees, sucking in several deep breaths before I struggle to my feet.

  I’m not quite sure where we are, but no more guards are chasing us and my brain isn’t being split in two by the furious scream of a god, so I assume we’re relatively safe… for now.

  Paris stands and brushes off his pants, glancing up at the place where the portal closed. “Well. That was a rollicking good time.”

  Beside him, Echo sits up and rolls his eyes, an expression that’s half smirk and half grimace turning up the corner of his lips. “Your view of a rollicking good time and mine are somewhat different, brother.”

  Callum shifts behind me with a grunt. “Shut up, both of you.”

  He sounds like his usual dour self. In fact, all of them sound like their usual selves.

  I can’t believe they’re acting so… normal.

  I’m sore, my body aching all over from being manhandled across the castle and nearly dying inside some kind of magical portal that defied all logic. But more than that, I’m absolutely shocked by what these three men just did for me.

  And they’re acting like it’s any other day.

  “Can you stop acting like none of that
just happened?” I blurt, my voice raspy and breathless.

  Echo clambers to his feet, shaking out his legs as if they’ve gone tingly. “What, the fall? It was unpleasant, I’ll grant you. And I have to admit, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to open up a gap in the weave before we hit the ground.” He grimaces. “We’ve practiced it, but it’s a dangerous spell. If we’d had any other option, believe me, we would’ve taken it.”

  “Kaius has wards on his palace that prevent people from traveling in or out via the weave,” Paris adds. “We couldn’t use magic to escape until we were no longer inside his walls.”

  My brain feels like it’s going to explode. Too much information is coming at me too fast, and it’s both more and less than I need.

  “That’s not—” I stop and shake my head, holding up a hand. “I don’t just mean the fall. Or the… the hole in the weave. I mean the everything! You just condemned me to death, and then betrayed Kaius!”

  “Oh, that.” Paris runs a hand through his blond hair, as if he’s afraid the fall might’ve mussed it up. His expression is inscrutable, and he won’t meet my gaze.

  “Yes, that!” I glance from him to Echo, but the dark-haired messenger won’t look at me either.

  Whatever just happened, it’s bigger than either of them are willing to admit.

  It means something.

  It means everything.

  Heart hammering in my chest, I whirl on Callum to demand answers.

  But I turn around just in time to see the big warrior falter. He’s gotten to his feet and is straightening, but with a wince, he bends over and clasps his side.

  Oh, farse.

  He’s hurt.

  9

  I close the short distance between us and grab Callum’s elbows to steady him. His eyes are closed and his face pale—much paler than it should be. There’s a pinch to his lips that reveals his pain, though he’s trying his hardest not to let it show. He has both hands clasped to his right side, pinpointing where he’s hurt.